Jindal’s Liberty U. speech: “A silent war against religious liberty”

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has issued excerpts for his high-profiled speech Saturday May 10, giving the commencement address to Liberty University’s graduating class of 2014 in Lynchburg, Virginia. A commencement address at Liberty University is often considered by many conservatives as a plum opportunity, especially for one seeking a national office, such as President of the United States.

Below are excerpts of Governor Jindal’s remarks as prepared for delivery.

The Governor’s speech will be available for viewing livetomorrow at 10:00am ESThere:www.liberty.edu

Excerpts as Prepared for Delivery:

I thought about giving a speech telling you that debt is good, redistribution of wealth is smart, and personal morality doesn’t matter, but you only need to know those things if you are planning to go to work for the federal government in Washington.

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Some kids go off to college and lose their way, they become convinced that their faith is not an intellectual pursuit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reason and logic lead to truth…which means that reason and logic lead to God.

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There is a general view among many of the elites in America that truly enlightened folks realize that all this faith and religion stuff is just quaint and antiquated thinking from an earlier era. Or that it is a nice restful place for those who are not as bright or as intellectually curious as they are.

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Today’s world is increasingly hostile to matters of faith. American culture has in many ways become a secular culture. At a minimum, it is safe to say that you are going into a world that is far more secular than the one your parents entered.

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America does not sustain and create faith. Faith created and sustains America. America did not invent religious freedom, religious freedom invented America.

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Today the American people, whether they know it or not, are mired in a silent war.

It threatens the fabric of our communities, the health of our public square, and the endurance of our constitutional governance. It is a war against the propositions in the Declaration of Independence.

It is a war against the spirit that motivated abolitionism.

It is a war against the faith that motivated the Civil Rights struggle.

It is a war against the soul of countless acts of charity.

It is a war against the conscience that drives social change.

It is a war against the heart that binds our neighborhoods together.

It is a war against America’s best self, at America’s best moments.

It is a war — a silent war — against religiousliberty.

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This war is waged in our courts and in the halls of political power. It is pursued with grim and relentless determination by a group of like-minded elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith — into a land where faith is silenced, privatized, and circumscribed.

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Under the Obama regime, you have the protection of the First Amendment as an individual, you see – but the instant you start a business, you lose those protections.

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Will churches in America even be able to remain part of the public square in a time when their views on sin are in direct conflict with the culture, and when expressing those views will be seen as hiding hateful speech behind religious protections?

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This war on religiousliberty– on your freedom to exercise your religion, on your freedom to associate, on your freedom of expression – is only going to continue. It is going to continue because of an idea, a wrongheaded concept: that religious freedom means you have the freedom to worship, and that's all.

In this misbegotten and un-American conception of religiousliberty, your rights begin and end in the pew. This is ridiculous. We have the right to practice our faith and protect our conscience no matter where we happen to be.

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Make no mistake: the war over religiouslibertyis the war over free speech, and without the first there is no such thing as the second.

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It is unmistakable that most of the Obama Administration’s attacks on religiouslibertyare aimed at conservative Christians. But the fact is that our religiouslibertiesare designed to protect people of all faiths.

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There was a time when liberals in this country believed in debate. But that is increasingly not the case for the modern Left in America. No, the modern Left in America has grown tired of debate. Their new strategy is simply to try to silence their critics.

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And the same thing happened again just this week, with another demonstration of intolerance from the entertainment industry. HGTV was working on a new show featuring the Benham brothers, twin brothers who graduated from right here atLibertyUniversity in 1998. But HGTV cancelled the show this week, allegedly because they learned that one of the brothers protested at the Democrat Party Convention, and the other had protested at an abortion clinic. Think about that for a minute. If these guys had protested at the Republican Party Convention, instead of cancelling their show, HGTV would probably have given them a raise.

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The modern Left in America is completely intolerant of the views of people of faith. They want a completely secular society where people of faith keep their views to themselves.

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It is true that Christians are the last group that it is ok to discriminate against in America. But so what? If God is with us, who can be against us? Don’t see yourself as a victim, America has enough people who see themselves as victims.